Build Shit - DIY - What's On Your Bench?

[FAP]

Here's a recent repair of something I built nearly 2 years ago to the day: a dual-555 Atari Punk Console house in a soup can.

In the original build, the battery pack was non-existent while the battery itself was housed inside the can: this new design mounts both the battery pack and the 1/4" output on the bottom of the can (effectively the top of the device), a much more convenient improvement.

No idea why it looks so nasty on the inside: maybe too much glue? I did a deeper clean after taking this photo:

I could've put some flashing lights with a control pit in there, but I wanted to treat this strictly as a repair job. I initially built this thing with the idea that I'd make more of them, inspired by a Diagram:A set I saw x years ago on youtube... jury's still out on whether I'll end up doing this or not.

You can find the schematic for it here.

[crochambeau]

Are there controls hidden in the pictures, or is that a strictly plug and go source?

[FAP]

The latter: just point the open end towards/away from a light source and have a ball.

[FAP]

Another DIY tool I cobbled together: this is a test bay for body contacts. More specifically, it’s just a piece of cardboard bent into a box-like shape with thumb tacks stuck into it; the business ends of the tacks are then soldered to wires that lead to points of interest on the PCB. This makes testing potential body contacts a lot more intuitive & closer in ‘feel’ to how the final product might be interacted with.

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[FAP]

Another testing jig for the current project:

Note to self: never get liquid super glue again. That stuff is an unbelievable PITA to get off your skin.

[NoiseWiki]

This is very early in development stage so the only thing on the bench is a literal sketch but it'll involve a optotheremin circuit and some Robotics

[FAP]

Finally done with this thing:


This is a breakout box housing two alternating vactrol-based LFOs.
"A" and "B" are standard square waves, while "X" and "Y" range from triangle/pseudo-sine to reverse-sawtooth waves; "A" and "X" alternate on/off with "B" and "Y," with "X" and "Y" being children of "A" and "B," respectively.
The output of each vactrol (designated by A/B/X/Y) is tied to two identical 1/8" output jacks; these outputs can then in turn be routed to circuit-bent devices with external photo-resistor options (my devices generally use 1/8" jacks as well, though the outputs on the Candlebox could easily be swapped with banana jacks or whatever output options the user is most comfortable with).

Here's the schematic; I didn't design it myself so much as I cobbled it together from other people's circuits. I'm sure there's better ways to do this, too: this is just what I had on hand.

[FAP]

Some more photos:

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And with this, I'm taking a hiatus from making noise machines. Spring is in the air, and I've been meaning to get back into traditional illustration as well. The idea is to come back to this during the winter when I can't do anything else–I have plenty of electronics projects I could be doing–though we'll see what happens.

[NoiseWiki]

Been making some cables with solderless JST connectors.. ugh .. tiny fucking shit.. I'm starting to get the hang of it after ruining a bunch of connectors

[FAP]

Stuck at home with COVID for the past five days and with most of my tools stuck at work, I got a little stir crazy and decided to try something I'd been meaning to do for a while: building a circuit without the use of solder. Actually, I wanted to build a really simple circuit before going with the whole wood & nails aesthetic, and I'm glad I did because, lesson learned, that aesthetic is a pain in the ass:

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The circuit itself is a variation on the Electra Distortion. There's tons of schematics of it available out there; the resistor values and diode part numbers vary from place to place but they all maintain the same basic premise. It's a super minimal build, and despite its lack of flexibility, the yielded gain isn't insignificant.

demos: